- Riptide GP: Renegade Achievements
- Riptide GP: Renegade News
- Forum44
- Walkthrough*
- Reviews2*
- Price
By Kevin Tavore,
The game's core is, of course, racing on the water. Aquatic racing can be difficult for a developer to make well. While a car has only to deal with pavement and dirt, on the water you need to account for waves, the ability to cut through the water as opposed to simply driving on top of it and the effects of other players. It's a completely different feeling compared to driving a car. Riptide GP: Renegade does a wonderful job setting it apart while still making it fun and accessible, thanks to a strong array of courses on which you'll be racing.
Each of the game's nine tracks is unique and fun to race. Each has its own theme and while some tracks can appear similar, they're still readily distinguishable from each other. Arcade racers usually have fantastical tracks and many have been done before, but Riptide has quite a few fresh ideas to differentiate itself. Highlights include racing down a river through a burning forest or through a flooded city where you can see cars submerged below you. In the first few hours especially, the visual impact of the tracks will keep you coming back for more just to see what's next.
The track design combines jumps and corners with huge drops and environmental changes to ensure you're constantly focused on what's coming next. The drops are enough to be fun on their own and they give the game a great sense of daring that makes each race exciting, but it's the environmental changes that really set the stage for some truly cool tracks. While not every track has them, the ones that do can change things pretty significantly. One track is centered around a giant naval battlefield and you'll have to contend with ships repositioning and being destroyed as you race. Another takes place in a hurricane where massive waves across the coast leave you making massive jumps as you try to cut through the water without being thrown off course. Other tracks have changing wave patterns that ensure each race is slightly different and the game is more considerably more fun for it all.
The SSX influences in the game come from the tricks you'll be able to pull off. Mastering these are essential not just because of the trick events you'll need to do, but simply as a way to get boost in any event. Tricks earn you boost with tougher tricks earning more. However, performing the same trick will give less and less benefit so you're encouraged to keep mixing things up, which means you'll need a large repertoire of tricks ready at your fingertips to maximize your performance. Tricks are easy to pull off while in the air using the left and right sticks. You could easily button mash randomly and do alright, but planning your tricks will result in speed and the tricks are intuitive enough that you won't need to flail randomly. While this mechanic could have seemed like a frustrating gimmick — especially considering they're mandatory — they're spread out enough that they only end up making those death-defying drops and jumps that much more exciting and the game is better for their inclusion.
In a change from Riptide GP2 and most other racing games, Renegade boasts its own story. You'll start the game by picking one of two characters named Impact and Poison. The story begins with their betrayal by the elite racer Krex as he gets them arrested for illegal racing and banned from the Riptide GP Circuit. Thus begins the duo's tale of revenge where they recruit a group of renegade racers with the eventual goal of toppling Krex. The story is quite awful but it never takes itself seriously and it works well with the game's arcadey tone. While it'll be hard to find any way to connect to the characters on an emotional level, you'll certainly remember them for the awful jokes they make and in this case, that's enough.
Renegade does offer a basic progression system that controls how you'll play the game. You'll start with just one watercraft and will unlock more as you play. There's the illusion of customization thanks to upgrades, but invariably every new vehicle will be substantially better than your previous one after an upgrade or two, so it feels more like linear progression instead of actual customization. This is a bit disappointing as some of the weaker crafts looked far cooler in my opinion and it would have been great to continue using them. Luckily, there was still some degree of customization thanks to a roster of about ten characters you can unlock, with color customization to change the look of your rider and vehicle.
One other change to the Riptide formula is the addition of police and it's a very confusing one. In Renegade, some races will have police that will follow you around and ram into you. While the normal racing AI only has light rubber banding, if at all, the police will constantly come from behind at speeds far faster than you can move and ram you into walls. To make matters worse they seem to ignore other racers at times, which means you can have a few police ruining your race while the other AI speed by unscathed. It seems like these were a play to emulate the Need for Speed formula where you need to contend with police in addition to other racers, but the end result is a poor imitation that makes the entire experience considerably worse whenever police are around.
The previous Riptide had an enjoyable and quick completion and Renegade follows that same formula. You'll need to complete the main story and the sidequests (extra races). There are nine collectibles and a host of miscellaneous achievements that won't come naturally but are easy, like jumping through radar dishes. Finally, you'll need to get 1st in every event... over 100 of them. Overall, there's nothing frustrating and it should take you about 10-15 hours, which is just about perfect.
Summary
Riptide GP: Renegade is a masterclass in how to take a good concept and execute it well. While nothing the game does is exceptional in any way, its faults are few and minimal. The water physics are fun to navigate and the tracks are absolutely stellar thanks to unique attributes and environmental effects which change the way you race. There's a mediocre story but it's filled with likeable characters and it doesn't take itself seriously. The faults are nitpicky with the biggest grievance being police that show up occasionally during races for no other purpose than to bother you. Renegade is a game that had a clear identity and the developers did a fantastic job designing every element of the game around that identity to create a game that works really well. If you're a fan of racing games or even just generally enjoy arcade games, Renegade is an essential experience for a few hours of fun.
Positives
- Water physics work well and the waves are fun to navigate
- Plenty of tracks that feel different and unique with moving parts that change things across laps
- Tricks add depth to the gameplay without feeling clunky and tacked on
- Variety of characters with color customization options
- Online multiplayer
Negatives
- While nine jet ski's are available, there's not much choice as most are strictly better than others
- Police seem to have no real purpose other than to ruin an otherwise good race
- Story is cringe-worthy
Ethics
More Riptide GP: Renegade stories:
- Superhot, Resident Evil Revelations and nine more games set to leave Xbox Game Pass soon
- Six More Games Join Xbox Game Pass, Bringing This Week's Total to 26
- Xbox Game Pass For PC is Available Now – For £4 in the UK and $5 in the US
- Four Games Leaving Xbox Game Pass at the End of January 2019
- TA Podcast: Extinction, Robocraft Infinity, Dangun Feveron and Win a Game
ReviewVideoXbox OneID@Xbox
Kevin is a lover of all types of media, especially any type of long form story. The American equivalent of Aristotle, he'll write about anything and everything and you'll usually see him as the purveyor of news, reviews and the occasional op-ed. He's happy with any game that's not point and click or puzzling, but would always rather be outdoors in nature.
Join
View discussion...
Hide ads
